This clubhouse is for those people with a dedicated media PC, advice and tech support for such setups.

Anyone can post, to become a member we simply need a basic list of your media system (PC, sound system, and screen/HDTV) - pictures preferably too (my sig has a link to mine, but its so ugly right now i'll wait til its upgraded before posting images)

As a very good example of the kind of rare info, i provide info for all samsung HDTV users:

Samsung HDTV's in the lower price ranges, use the 1360x768 resolution.
My model (and many others) include 3 HDMI ports - HDMI 2 is listed as DVI compatible in the manual, and on the back of the TV. HDMI 1 and 3, only support 720p and 1080i (1080i distorts badly, and 720p blurs for text) more or less, HDMI 1 and 3 are useless. This problem occurs on HDMI adaptors AND with native HDMI devices.
if you werent aware of this, you'd never get your devices looking clear or stable at all, as they could not detect the displays native resolution. you cant force it, either
If you have a device that only does 720P... hit the "P.Size" button on the remote until it goes to "just scan" mode. That will let you use the somewhat fuzzy 720P mode for say, a PS3.

This problem isnt contained to just samsung... in fact, several brands dont provide a DVI compatible port at all, and tell you to just use analogue VGA... moral of the story is get a 720p or 1080p screen, avoid 1360x768 where possible unless you can verify a DVI compatible port.

video is outputed by the onboard HDMI and audio is outputed via onboard coaxal

currently this pc is underclocked/ under volted to 250*8 = 2 ghz @ 1.1v, and is completly passive (execpt psu) with a ton of sound absorbing foam to reduce HDD noise, also ram is at 750mhz? 5-5-5-15 but i will be replacing this ram cos it is crap and is causing boot issues

the system before underclocking/ undervolting used 60 watts at idle and 90 at load (tested with watt meter) i am asuming it will use aprox 45>55 watts at idle and i am unsure about load

One thing i'm particularly looking for, is advice on things that have gone wrong, or worked well for the media PC - i had hell with my samsung screen and only one HDMI port supporting the native res, as well as finding out that digital audio is only 2.0 sound by default.

Information like that isnt easy to come across for a newbie, so i think we should share that kind of info here.

How to get sound from your HDMI port. What answers/solutions have you come up with? One of the main reasons I went with the Auzentech Prelude sound card is because there is supposed to be an HDMI extension card for it in production (estimated release is late 2008). Currently I use RCA cables from the Prelude to my receiver's 5.1 input. Auzentech is supposed to be releasing DTS Interactive drivers for the Prelude any day now (they claimed Q2 2008, but they are late) which should at least get me full time DTS from the optical port.

My plan/hope is to eventually get to only 2 cables running from the HTPC., a power cable and a HDMI cable.

How to get sound from your HDMI port. What answers/solutions have you come up with? One of the main reasons I went with the Auzentech Prelude sound card is because there is supposed to be an HDMI extension card for it in production (estimated release is late 2008). Currently I use RCA cables from the Prelude to my receiver's 5.1 input. Auzentech is supposed to be releasing DTS Interactive drivers for the Prelude any day now (they claimed Q2 2008, but they are late) which should at least get me full time DTS from the optical port.

My plan/hope is to eventually get to only 2 cables running from the HTPC., a power cable and a HDMI cable.

Click to expand...

well, there's a couple of soundcards in the works that will support HDMI, you can view the links to the announcements here at TPU:

I haven't tried, though, but, IIRC the HD3000 series have an onboard audio DSP - I've never tried installing any drivers for them (which I only found through MS Update), or using the HDMI adapter as I don't have a capable monitor/screen

How to get sound from your HDMI port. What answers/solutions have you come up with? One of the main reasons I went with the Auzentech Prelude sound card is because there is supposed to be an HDMI extension card for it in production (estimated release is late 2008). Currently I use RCA cables from the Prelude to my receiver's 5.1 input. Auzentech is supposed to be releasing DTS Interactive drivers for the Prelude any day now (they claimed Q2 2008, but they are late) which should at least get me full time DTS from the optical port.

My plan/hope is to eventually get to only 2 cables running from the HTPC., a power cable and a HDMI cable.

Click to expand...

i've done it.

nvidia cards have an optional two pin SPDIF input, you connect your soundcard upto that and then the digital audio gets passed through the HDMI cable.

ATI cards have a built in realtek HD digital soundcard.

However, both are limited to 2.0 channel audio unless its pre-encoded into dolby digital or DTS, and you have a suitable decoder hooked up to the TV's/receivers output. Nvidias option requires a soundcard with SPDIF output, but you can always use a card such as the auzentech i have and get it that way - with ATI you dont require a soundcard and its easier to setup (simply choose that card in windows) but games and so on are stuck with 2.0 sound.

I have it setup for Nv and ATI here, but my TV cant output multichannel audio... it downmixes to PCM 2.0 audio, so i get no benefits from using HDMI Audio.

Edit: oh and you dont need a special HDMI adaptor. I have a 'special' Nv one, a generic one from a local store, and one that turns the HDMI port on the TV into a DVI port (so that you use a DVI cable to the PC) and all three provided audio.